176 THE NORTH POLE 



its nadir, and one each at the right and left. Outside 

 was another halo, with four other moons. 



Sometimes during the summer we see the parhelion, 

 a similar phenomenon of the sun. I have seen the 

 appearance of the false suns — or sun-dogs as the sailors 

 call them — so near that the lowest one would seem to 

 fall between me and a snow-bank twenty feet away, so 

 near that by moving my head backward and forward I 

 could shut it out or bring it into view. This was the 

 nearest I ever came to finding the pot of gold at the 

 foot of the rainbow. 



On the night of November 12, the ice of the channel 

 pack, which for more than two months had seemed 

 unmindful of our intrusive presence, arose in wrath and 

 tried to hurl us upon the equally inhospitable shore. 



All that evening the wind had been gradually 

 increasing in violence, and about half-past eleven the 

 ship began to complain, creaking, groaning and mutter- 

 ing to herself. I lay in my bunk and listened to the 

 wind in the humming rigging, while the moonlight, 

 shining through the porthole, filled the cabin with dim 

 shadows. Toward midnight, mingled with the noises 

 of the ship, another and more ominous sound became 

 audible — the grinding of the ice in the channel outside. 



I threw on my clothes and went on deck. The tide 

 was running flood, and the ice was moving resistlessly 

 past the point of the cape. The nearer ice, between us 

 and the outer pack, was humming and groaning with 

 the steadily increasing pressure. By the light of the 

 moon we could see the pack as it began to break and 

 pile up just beyond the edge of the ice-foot outside us. 

 A few minutes later the whole mass broke with a rabid 



